My Lady Series Bundle (24 page)

Harrison had probably given his damn life for hers and Drummond would be damned if he would let him down now. He just fervently wished that he’d had the time earlier to gather the Archangels together before his need to move. With no time on his side he'd known then that he would only be able to save one, and he'd known then which one it would be. But damnation, if any man alive could make it out against those odds, it was his venomous best friend, Harrison.

T
wo weeks later, Chloe came downstairs to have tea with Gabriella. It was just last evening the Duke and Duchess of Kittridge had sat her down in their small formal dining room. There they had calmly explained to her that while Lord Ravenscar was alive and had made his escape from the warehouse, he would not be returning for her. She had also been told gently, that she was free to leave their company to continue on with her life as she wished. She was told that Lia had left England for the Continent, under the belief that she, her sister, was dead by the hands of Kant. In truth after they had explained to her that Raven would not be coming for her, Chloe had heard very little of what they said. And then she excused herself shortly afterward.

She had felt so dizzy and disorientated on reaching her chambers that she feared the effects of the opium she’d been given had returned. It had taken her nearly a week to feel close to normal again and she still wore high collars to hide the bruising around her neck. She could only remember bits and pieces of what had happened, yet she did remember the horrible shameful collar. The rest she was too frightened to remember, and she did wonder if that was why Raven would not come back for her. Had he seen them using her? Had he seen them raping her? Had it even happened? She did not know, and she thought, that she did not want to know.

At other times during the long night she thought that Raven no longer wanted her because he now knew that she was Chloe and not Lia. Yet he had saved her. She remembered Drummond telling her that, only her mind kept losing pieces as soon as she learned them. She was afraid to tell anyone about it, afraid they could think her crazy. She needed Raven desperately but she did not know how to ask for him.

“Come sit beside me, Chloe,” Gabriella said when Chloe entered the yellow sitting room. “I have our tea here. And I do so wish to speak to you. Is Sebastian down for his nap then?”

“Thank you,” Chloe replied automatically as she sat beside Gabriella hoping that she could hide the trembling in her hands as she drank her tea. “Yes, the nursemaid has fed him,” she murmured trying to smile. She knew that Gabriella had hired the nurse to feed Sebastian when she had been kidnapped by Lia and she had continued to use the nursemaid because of the opium. She dared not try and feed Sebastian herself. “He is sleeping now,” she finished quietly.

“He is such a good baby,” Gabriella said, patting her hand.

“You have been so kind to us,” Chloe whispered, feeling tears threaten her suddenly as one dripped down her cheek. “I do not know what is wrong with me.”

“Now-now,” Gabriella murmured, catching her hands before she could run from the room, and then Gabriella was embracing her as she wept silently. “You see,” Gabriella said. “I told Drummond that you took our news entirely too well last evening. There-there, darling, it will be all right,” she soothed.

Chloe did not know how long she cried on Gabriella’s shoulder before she calmed enough to accept a linen to blow her nose.

“You love Harrison, I know,” Gabriella said, rubbing one of her hands between both of hers. “It is because of this that I am going to tell you something and why I wanted to speak to you without Drummond here.” Gabriella smiled. “Our men can be too secretive. I suppose it is a product of their shared profession. You must believe that Drummond feels he is doing what will cost you the least harm in the end.”

Chloe imagined this was another time when her mind was confused and she could not comprehend, because what Gabriella was saying did not make sense, until Gabriella said, “That is why I have decided to tell you about the note. Our Harrison left a missive.”

“He left a note!” Chloe exclaimed hopefully. “What does it say?” Yet she realized belatedly, especially when she heard Gabriella sigh, that it might not be good news . . . probably was not.

“Chloe, I want you to understand,” Gabriella said. “That not even Drummond knows where Harrison has gone . . . or exactly why. And that is highly unusual. But here is a note that he sent to Drummond the next morning, the morning after Drummond brought you here. You must understand that Drummond hoped that he could find Harrison and that is why he waited so long to speak to you.”

Chloe opened the note slowly with trembling fingers and read it silently. “I am alive. Keep them both safe. I will not be returning.” It was signed, Lord Ravenscar. Chloe touched the scroll of his name with her fingertips. He had flourished penmanship, she would not have expected that. “What will I do without him?” she murmured, truly forgetting for a moment that she was in Gabriella’s company. “He enslaved me. Does he not know that? Does he not know that I love him? Does he not care?”

“Oh, Chloe darling, we have a wealth of evidence that Harrison cares for you and cares deeply,” Gabriella said.

Chloe was completely startled to hear Gabriella’s voice, and with her heart thudding she looked up at Gabriella. What had she said to her? How long had Gabriella been there?

“No,” Gabriella continued to say, still patting her hand. “Harrison cares for you. It must have been something that happened that evening, after the party perhaps. Or perhaps he feels badly about mistaking you for Lia. Of course he did not, yet he was too stubborn to admit it. The way he called you Rosebud clearly showed that he was torn.”

After the party
. . . after the party. Those words kept circling in Chloe’s mind even after she left Gabriella’s company. And those words did not leave her. She did not forget them like so many others lately. She remembered the carriage ride. She remembered how angry Raven had been, and she remembered the feeling of him inside of her, branding her his forever . . . loving her.

At midnight that night she snuck out of the Kittridge’s fashionable London home leaving a note for Gabriella to take care of Sebastian for her. She knew that her son could not be in better hands and she knew that she had to find Raven. Not once did it enter her mind that the best master spy in all of England, Lord Kittridge, had been unable to find Raven, and what hope could she have of doing so. Instead she went home, where she felt the safest. She went to Raven’s home. That was where she would start.

The staff did not seem to find anything unusual about her sudden appearance. They treated her like royalty or the lady of the manor even hinting to find out if she knew when Lord Ravenscar would return. She retired to Raven’s bedchambers at peace there for the first time in weeks, surrounded by his lingering presence in the room. She went to his armoire and took out one of his evening jackets to wear. With nothing else against her skin but his jacket it felt as if Raven were holding her. Then she began to search the room until she found the small oval portrait, and it was then she knew that she had found her clue. The woman in the portrait was beautiful and she had Raven’s eyes.

H
arrison stood in the garden with his boot propped on the stone bench beside where Catherine was sitting in the morning sunshine. He had not had a drink in three weeks, not since the night he had savagely and drunkenly taken Chloe in the back of his carriage. Not since he had learned what depravity he had fostered on an innocent woman, and not since he admitted that she
was
Chloe, and that he loved her, but had lost her because of his own need for vengeance. He wondered if he thought he could atone by not drinking again, when he knew he would never be able to atone for what he had done.

As it was, it had just been by the grace of a God that he barely believed in, and his own skills that he'd made it out of the warehouse alive. He’d had to kill four men, including Kant, to convince the others that fleeing was more profitable than mobbing together to kill him. It had also helped that day that most of the gentlemen in the warehouse were merely business associates and patrons out for the promise by Kant of an unusual event. Only three of Kant’s personal men had anything more invested than the promise of hedonistic depravity. The hedonistic depravity of gang raping Chloe. At least he had done one thing right by finding her and saving her from that vicious peril. Catherine suddenly spoke beside him, drawing him from his brooding thoughts.

“So you will go,” Catherine asked carefully. She could not believe that she was attempting what she was attempting. But it was years past time that she repay her brother for all that he had done for her. “You will go to the island on the east lake and see that old Martha is well?”

“I have said that I will,” Harrison answered distractedly. “She was my nurse also, and she kept him from beating me many times by hiding me.”

He never called him father,
Catherine thought, not that she blamed him. “Yes well, with Bethany so small and my husband Robert away, I could not go myself. Yet Martha always comes for mass and when she did not come to the church yesterday. Well, I cannot help but worry.” Thank god Robert was away, Catherine thought, he would never understand what she was doing. And she prayed that God would forgive her for the small lies.

“I will leave right now so that we can both put our minds to rest,” Harrison said.

Within the hour Harrison reached the small pier on the east lake where he tied off his stallion, noticing the small rowboat tied off to the pier. He squinted his eyes in the direction of the island trying to see if another boat was tied off on its pier. It was too far to tell, yet he assumed there would be a boat kept on each side so he climbed down to the row boat and settled in grasping the oars.

It was healthy exercise, a beautiful day, and the excursion stretched his muscles. He mused broodingly, that it was too bad he could enjoy none of it because his mind kept drifting unerringly to thoughts of Chloe. He was slightly reassured to find another row boat tied off on the island’s pier when he reached it. That meant at least old Martha was here, he just hoped that it did not mean she was too ill to have left her small island.

The trail leading inland was well kept and not too steep and in a few minutes he was within sight of Martha’s two story cottage. In days gone by, this had been a hunting and fishing refuge for Catherine’s husband's family. But years ago it had been given over to old Martha, to live out her days in happier circumstances than when she’d been a nurse employed by the old man Ravenscar.

Harrison was again relieved to see smoke coming from the chimney of the cottage as he walked closer, and upon entrance into the small well-kept kitchen he found quick evidence of old Martha’s presence. It appeared as if she were expecting visitors for tea and that she had just stepped out for a moment. There was a pot of freshly steeping tea and a plate of newly made scones on the kitchen’s tabletop. After checking all the other rooms in the cottage and around the immediate perimeter, Harrison concluded that old Martha must have gone out for a short walk and he settled down in the kitchen to wait for her return. He decided that if she did not return in a reasonable length of time he would search farther afield. But for now he poured himself a cup of tea and settled down to eat one of the blueberry scones. A true favorite of his that was impossible to overlook.

In the time since he had quit consuming vast quantities of Scottish whiskey every day, his sweet tooth had become mightily engaged. And the blueberries seemed to be fresh, he mused, as he bit into his second one, feeling unusually relaxed as he settled more comfortably into his chair. After two cups of tea and two scones, he was nearly falling asleep in his chair, and he knew that he should get up and try to find old Martha. Yet, he could not seem to find the energy as his eyelids dipped and his chin dropped onto his chest . . .

H
arrison was afraid for a moment. Afraid that he had taken a drink again when he had sworn that he never would. His mind felt that way . . . fuzzy, and his mouth was dry as it was after a long bout with the whiskey bottle. However, it was when he tried to move his hands to wipe his mouth that his groggy mind knew something was very wrong. What had he been doing? Drinking tea waiting for old Martha, he thought?

He opened his eyes slowly, they felt gritty and he tried to twist his wrists in the bonds that held them over his head. Bonds! His eyes popped open as he fought the ropes tying his wrists and ankles to a bedpost. Bedpost? He was naked and gagged! Tied to a bedpost!

“A- A-,”
he snarled against the gag in his mouth as he turned his head with his gaze sweeping the room until . . . Chloe!

“It will not do you any good to fight the ropes, Raven,” Chloe said softly, from where she sat in a high-backed chair, five paces from him. “I tied them too tight for you to escape. Thank goodness, the laudanum I put into the tea made you act like a drunken sailor or I would never have been able to manage you on my own. As it was, you were very pliable to my wants. Do you remember?”

Harrison glared at her. He glared at her beauty. She was wearing a pink-colored silk dress with a dangerously low décolletage and the pistol he always carried was in her hand. He jerked his head, “no,” angrily to her question. What was she doing here?

He thought for one brief moment that they both could have been captured somehow by any of his many enemies. However, Chloe’s words dispelled that notion. It was damned hard not to be able to speak his mind. That and his exposed dick had grown hard at just the sight of her. So now he stood gagged and tied against the bedpost with a hard jutting cock.

Chloe’s deep brown eyes lowered to his turgid dick as she idly played with the hammer on his pistol. Was this revenge? Her revenge? Weak with a sudden rush of intense emotions he sagged then unexpectedly against the ropes around his wrists. His knees weak with emotion as he tilted his head back against the post and closed his eyes. Yes!
God yes, revenge
. He needed to be revenged upon. His soul needed it.